Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Victorian Children and their Representation in Literature

"Oliver
cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender
mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the
louder”. This is one of the lines that readers can find in the first chapter of
Oliver Twist, written by Charles
Dickens, and with which I would like to start this entry about children in the
Victorian period and how they are represented in literature. First, I will
provide explain some background about the Victorian period and literature and
then I will address some texts or excerpts of this era and talk about children
and their representation in literature such as Oliver Twist and Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland.

As
we know, the Victorian period begins in 1837 with the reign of Queen Victoria
and ends in 1901. The period is known by a huge growth in population,
improvements in technology, ways of viewing the world, and poor conditions for
the working class. Literature was an important field of the era and novels and
long works about society and all these aspects of everyday Victorian life were
published. One of the aspects of society written in literature is the one
regarding children and childhood, and with child labour and education, children
literature starts being developed by writers such as Lewis Carroll. The
Victorian period was a society dominated by children. Child labour was a fact,
and this is shown in works such as Oliver
Twist. Gavin says that “the dual influence of Romantic linking of childhood
with the imagination and of Victorian writers like Dickens highlighting the
importance of fantasy for children gave rise to the Golden Age of British children’s
literature” (2012, 9).

I
have decided to establish the difference between two kinds of children
represented in the Victorian period. On one hand, we have the poor, working-class
or ill child prototype, such as Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim. On the other hand, we
have the child belonging to a higher class level, such as Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, more
related to the fantasy topic.

Gavin
says that “childhood in Victorian texts for adults […] was a vulnerable, often
painful, powerless state, frequently lonely, with the child portrayed as a
victim of adult power, emotional or physical brutality, social neglect,
illness, and early death” (2012, 9). This is shown in Dickens’s novels and
tales. Poor Victorian children lived in misery, in small houses. They did not
have expensive toys or clothes, and they had to work to be able to feed. Oliver
Twist was a poor child whose mother died and whose father was absent. He spends
several years in a workhouse for orphans, where he is mistreated. Dickens shows
the injustice and the way children were mistreated in excerpts like the
following:

’Please, sir, I want
some more.’

The master was a fat,
healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the
small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The
assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

’What!’ said the master
at length, in a faint voice.

You can watch this moment in a scene from
one of the film adaptations of Oliver
Twist:

Previously, the
children of the workhouse had held a council in which they chose who should ask
for more food, since they suffered the tortures of slow starvation. Oliver is
the one who does it despite the consequences that this behaviour could have. The
master looks stupefied at him as if he had asked for the impossible, representing
how adults were oppressors and how they mistreated children only because they
thought they had the right to do so. Poverty led to hunger and hunger led to
work or crime. Children used to work on farms, in homes as servants, and in
factories. They also worked as chimney sweeps. In the following pictures, we
can see children working as chimney sweeps, smoking as if they were adults, or as
pickpockets committing crime. Striking, isn’t it?

Children play an important role in
Dickens’s stories. An example of this is the character of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. Scrooge, the main
character of the story, is a bitter, old man whose only concern is his
business. He hates generosity and happiness, and he considers himself superior
to the poor people. The poor conditions of the children, the starvation, and
the child labour are also addressed in the book. The difference between upper
(Scrooge) and low (Tiny Tim) classes are established.

‘God bless us every one.’ said Tiny Tim,
the last of all.

He sat very close to his
father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his,
as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that
he might be taken from him.

‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge,
with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’

‘I see a vacant seat,’
replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner,
carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child
will die.’

‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh,
no, kind Spirit. say he will be spared.’

Tiny Tim, an ill and poor child, plays an
important role in the character development of Scrooge. Malkovich describes
Tiny Tim’s character and importance by saying:

Tiny Tim tells us we should be happy, no
matter what our lot in life brings. Yet Tiny Tim is, like many Dickens’s
characters, an imperfect child. It is the fairylike quality of his nature that
makes him memorable to us, even if it is sweeter than sugarplums at Christmas.
Readers first see Tiny Tim on his father’s shoulder, but Dickens points out,
“Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an
iron frame!”. While there is a semblance of helplessness in Tiny Tim’s physical
frame, he is like a family Jiminy Cricket who ultimately keeps up the family’s
spirits in the face of their poverty and helps melts Scrooge’s icy, miserly
heart.

(2012,
44).

Through this
Christmas tale, Dickens addressed the miserable conditions of poor children,
representing them through the character of Tiny Tim. In the story, if Scrooge
does not change and becomes more generous, Tiny Tim will die. This might be
seen as a moral message regarding the differences between social classes. If
wealthy people do not help the poor, the misery of the latter will continue
increasing and they will never stop struggling with the hard conditions that
characterize their lives. The concept of generosity with a Christmas
environment is enough to make a story so successful, with several film
adaptations that people never get tired of watching.

Now, I would like
to give an example of the opposite kind of Victorian child than we have seen in
Oliver and Tiny Tim. Wealthy Victorian children used to be spoiled and they did
not have to go through the poor life conditions of the poor. They were given
good quality clothes and toys, and were able to attend school and be part of
the educational system. Alice from Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland is an example of the child belonging to an upper
social class. However, even if Alice does not live in poor conditions, the
character goes through a journey of learning and Carroll presents another kind
of Victorian children, as Wood says:

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865)
hold in suspension the tensions between defining the child as idealized other
and the culpable object, to be beaten if necessary to fit the form. Carroll’s
choice of nonsense mode to render the contradictions of Victorian childhood
signals a new approach to the problem, one that conjoins idealism and realism.

(2012,
123).

These children were taught protocol and
manners, especially girls. Wood says that “[…] Alice knows that she is expected
to behave according to the codes appropriate to her superior social status” but
“[…] Alice is confident about her knowledge of proper protocols for
conversation and general behaviour. Alice converses with her inferiors and
rebukes violations of etiquette as her right” (2012, 125). We usually see in the novel how she
behaves or address others depending on the way she has been taught. For
instance, in the tea party:

“Have some wine,” the
March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table,
but there was nothing on it but tea. “ I don ’t see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn ’t any,” said the March Hare. “Then it wasn ’t very civil of you to offer
it,” said Alice angrily.

I am pretty sure you must have watched the adaptation of the Disney film:

Finally, I would like to highlight again the
difference between the behaviour of the adults and the children in Victorian
period. Alice is not ill like Tiny Tom and she does not have to work like
Oliver. Therefore, she was not oppressed in society and mistreated by adults
like the two boys were. However, several allusions to behaving like an adult
are shown in excerpts like the following:

“Who are you
?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging
opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir,
just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up
this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“ What do you mean by that ?” said the Caterpillar
sternly. “ Explain yourself !”

“ I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,”
Alice replied very politely, “for I can ’t understand it myself to begin with ;
and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

We can see here that Alice feels lost and that she does
not know who she is anymore, maybe referring in a subtle way to how difficult growing
up when she says “and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing”.
Children were below adults hierarchically speaking. For instance, when Alice
eats the mushroom, she gains height, and Wood says that “becoming large at will
would appear to offer Alice the means to dominate others, negating one of the
chief reasons adults have power over children” (2012, 127-128).

In conclusion, both poor and rich children were
represented in Victorian literature, but writers of both kinds of characters
intended to portray childhood in a way that could be connected to the events
happening in the period and that could raise elements of reality such as
hunger, child labour, illness, or simply questions about oneself in the process
of learning and growing up. Alice is written in a context of fantasy, whereas
Oliver and Tiny Tim are written in a context of harsh society and difficulties,
both works presenting two kinds of child representation in the Victorian
literature.

3 comments:

Hi Mari, I really enjoyed reading your blog post! your decision to open the post with a quotation from Oliver Twist really makes your work stand out and instantly engages the reader! Your portrayal of Children through Victorian novels is very clever and I really like how you have not only focused on children from the harsh societal aspect but also through fantasy. Alice in Wonderland is one of my favourite children's novels so I may be slightly biased, but I think this is a great blog post!

This was a very fun blog to read. I had never thought about the difference in social standing from the child's perspective before. The videos were placed perfectly and gave great examples of the different circumstances of the children as well as the different way of speaking. Alice certainly spoke with more authority and education than Oliver, yet both were just trying to understand and enjoy childhood.